VACATION: I'm heading to New York for many days of goofing off. I'll post again around June 14.

Therefore, I'll point to some nice long articles to keep you busy. :)

peterme pointed to this fellow's whole site, but I want to single out this essay in particular:

• In Praise of Evolvable Systems [Clay Shirky]
  HTTP and HTML are the Whoopee Cushion and Joy Buzzer of Internet protocols, only comprehensible as elaborate practical jokes. For anyone who has tried to accomplish anything serious on the Web, it's pretty obvious that of the various implementations of a worldwide hypertext protocol, we have the worst one possible.
  
  Except, of course, for all the others.

Excellent reading.

The Linux Journal interview with Larry Wall that I quoted from on May 24 is now online. Good stuff:

• Larry Wall, the Guru of Perl [Linux Journal]
  The reason Perl gives you more than one way to do anything is this: I truly believe computer programmers want to be creative, and they may have many different reasons for wanting to write code a particular way. What you choose to optimize for is your concern, not mine. I just supply the paint--you paint the picture.

"We have a relationship with a competitor of yours... and we're telling you not to do what we let everyone else under the sun do... but don't take it as harassment or anything...":

• Amazon, NYT in legal spat [CNNfn]
  The paper demanded Amazon.com license the rights to reprint the New York Times Best Sellers List or stop using the list.

How To Deconstruct Almost Anything [Electric Communities]

In a fortune cookie I got Friday: "Romance comes into your life this year in a very unusual way".

A few months late, but accurate nonetheless. :)

• Will Hannibal the Cannibal eat Hollywood? [Salon]
  Informed sources say Universal, which controls the property, is seriously considering passing on the project.

I had a Big Idea today. A website I'd like to see that doesn't exist. One that, to do right, would require a nontrivial staff of people and is therefore something that would require an infusion of capital -- not a process that's appealing to me at the moment. I may try to do it myself, at least at the beginning...

I won't be able to start it up for many months though (gotta put food on the table), so you (and I) will just have to wait...

A couple of hops from a link on RobotWisdom, here's a cool batch of .wav files:

• Bugs Bunny Sound Clips
  "Weeell, goodbye! And don't think it hasn't been a little slice of heaven.. 'cause it hasn't!"

Finally, I'm putting out my shingle as a web-worker for hire. Constructive criticism of my Services page is welcome (but since I'll be offline, I can't do anything about it until I get back...)

I already know:

• I should have some links to previous work (my excuse: I've got some projects in the pipeline that I'd much rather point to than anything that's out there currently) and,
• I need to fix the dead-button problem on my log archive pages (1999, 06, etc.) in order to claim understanding of site usability (it'll be done soon! really!)

but I mean besides that...

Have a good week!